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L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 298, November 21, 2004 Give people what they want: more government!
Greetings from Falluja
Special to TLE Do you like the "A-ha!" experience? Preamble:April 28, 2003, U.S. soldiers killed 18 Falluja school children. Act I:In the April, 2004 attack on Falluja, which ended after 3 weeks in defeat of the "coalition" forces: U.S. forces bombed the power plant at the beginning of the assault; ...The town was placed under siege; the ban on bringing in food, medicine, and other basic items was broken only when Iraqis en masse challenged the roadblocks. ... After initial instances in which people were prevented from leaving, U.S. forces began allowing everyone to leave except for what they called "military age males," men usually between 15 and 60. Keeping noncombatants from leaving a place under bombardment is a violation of the laws of war. Act II:A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest US air raids in the Iraqi city of Falluja. Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city. ... A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault. US strikes raze Falluja hospital, BBC, Saturday, 6 November, 2004, 13:14 GMT 532_clip2 In a series of actions over the weekend, the United States military and Iraqi government destroyed a civilian hospital in a massive air raid, captured the main hospital, and prohibited the use of ambulances in the besieged city of Fallujah. Fallujah: US Declares War on Hospitals, Ambulances, by Brian Dominick, AntiWar.com, November 10, 2004 532_clip3 NEAR FALLUJAH, Iraq Nov 12, 2004—Hundreds of men trying to flee the assault on Fallujah have been turned back by U.S. troops following orders ... "We assume they'll go home and just wait out the storm or find a place that's safe," one 1st Cavalry Division officer, who declined to be named, said Thursday. ... Army Col. Michael Formica, who leads forces isolating Fallujah, admits the rule sounds "callous." But he insists it's is key to the mission's success. Insurgent attacks across Iraq stretched American forces to their limits yesterday when rebels appeared to be in control of at least two cities, and the operation in Fallujah entered its most dangerous phase. ...Some of the toughest street fighting encountered so far erupted during the day as rebels re-emerged in areas already secured by US marines in the north of the city. Gunmen resumed positions on the roofs of mosques which had earlier been cleared ... Her shins, shattered by bullets from US soldiers when they fired through the front door of her house, are both covered by casts. Small plastic drainage backs filled with red fluid sit upon her abdomen, where she took shrapnel from another bullet. Journalists with the troops speak of a city that is gradually being devastated. Scarcely a single house does not bear some form of weapons scar and many have been rendered uninhabitable. The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer [Bilal Hussein] stayed behind to capture insider images during the siege of [Falluja] ... In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein's northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire. No outside aid has reached civilians in the city since the offensive began last Monday, and yesterday US forces kept an Iraqi Red Crescent aid convoy of seven trucks and ambulances waiting at the main hospital near a bridge on the edge of the city. ... Reports from within Falluja yesterday said bodies lay in the streets, homes and mosques were destroyed, and power and telephone lines were down. ... ... the command in Baghdad thought there were at least 2,000 insurgents, and perhaps as many as 5,000. But the coalition forces have failed to find large clusters and now think that there might have been less than 1,000, military sources said yesterday. The senior defense official said some generals now think there might have been 600 or fewer. U.S. suspects many insurgents have fled, By Rowan Scarborough, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, November 12, 2004 532_clip10 Fallujah has been under relentless aerial and artillery bombardment and without electricity since Monday. Reports have said residents are running low on food. An officer here said it was likely that those who stay in their homes would live through the assault, but agreed the city was a risky and frightening place to live. You read about precision strikes, and it's true that America's GPS-guided bombs are very accurate when they're not malfunctioning, the 80 or 85% of the time that they work, their targeting radius is 10 meters, i.e., they hit within 10 meters of the target. Even the smallest of them, however, the 500-pound bomb, has a blast radius of 400 meters; - Fallujah and the Reality of War, By RAHUL MAHAJAN, CounterPunch, November 6, 2004 532_clip12 Once the battle ends, military officials say all surviving military-age men can expect to be tested for explosive residue, catalogued, checked against insurgent databases and interrogated about ties with the guerrillas. U.S. and Iraqi troops are in the midst of searching homes, and plan to check every house in the city for weapons. GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return, Associated Press, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com, November 16, 2004 532_clip13 ...all the excuses Mr. Bush gave for attacking the people of Iraq were either wrong or lies. ... We'll only mention in passing that the domestic price for "our" sarkar attacking Iraq, a country with no WMD, [1] no al'Qaeda links, and no connections to 9-11 [2] so-far has been $87 billion, a good chunk of our civil liberties—and 1,239 or so American soldier's lives, not to mention a minimum of approximately 8,000 more wounded and/or maimed. [3] L. Reichard White, The Only Way to Make Your Vote Count, The Libertarian Enterprise, Oct. 31, 2004 532_clip14
[1] WASHINGTON - President Bush and his vice president conceded Thursday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction... Cheney dismissed the significance of Duelfer's central findings, telling supporters in Miami, "The headlines all say `no weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.' We already knew that." -Bush, Cheney Concede Saddam Had No WMDs, http://story.news.yahoo.com, Thu Oct 7, By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer return [2] "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11," Bush told reporters as he met members of Congress on energy legislation. Bush Distances from Cheney on Saddam-9/11 Link, Reuters, Wed September 17, 2003 06:08 PM ET, By Steve Holland . return [3] An up-to-date listing of U.S. soldiers killed in combat can be found HERE. And while more than 8,000 have been officially listed as injured or maimed, it seems that more than 17,000 U.S. soldiers have been evacuated from the Iraq theatre of operations. return
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